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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28423401">Under Glass</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasshibou/pseuds/House%20of%20Halation'>House of Halation (glasshibou)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shall We Date?: Obey Me!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Escapism, F/M, Toxic Relationship, Yandere, body control?, from simpcord, not mind control but, really it's a very bad relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:00:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28423401</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasshibou/pseuds/House%20of%20Halation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You promised, once, that you'd never leave Solomon.</p><p>Don't break your promises. </p><p>(Look, I'm very serious about the warnings here.)<br/></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Main Character/Solomon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>147</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Under Glass</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taeunnie/gifts">Taeunnie</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>One last reminder to double check the tags.<br/>One <i>further</i> reminder that seeking out and engaging with content that you find triggering is self harm. Please do not engage with this if you think you might find it harmful.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This… isn’t working out.</p><p>You’ve<em> tried </em> to make it work, to ignore the long absences and the way he ignores you as soon as one of his leads digs up some shiny new magical artifact or overpowered witch or… Anything that he can use to lock himself in his study for days on end, seemingly with the end goal of ignoring you. You’ve tried to ignore the way he’s dug himself so far into your life that you’re not sure where you really are anymore. The moves come so frequently—a loft apartment in Munich, a little hideaway in Osaka, an entire penthouse in Dhaka—that you feel like you’ve seen a thousand lifetimes pass you by in the few months you’ve been with him. Millions of strange faces and not a friend in sight, nobody but him and the soft looks he gives you whenever he isn’t completely consumed in whatever quixotic quest he’s sent himself on this time. </p><p>Your chance to start fresh had been when the exchange program ended. When you could have put all of the demons and magic and the soft gleam of silver eyes behind you. You could have gone back to the utterly normal life you were leading. You <em> should </em> have gone back to the utterly normal life you were leading. </p><p>Instead you took Solomon’s hand and followed the ageless sorcerer on his self-assigned quest to protect the human realm, stepped into the sunlight that took you from the Devildom and never looked back.</p><p>Until now.</p><p>You fidget in front of the narrow stairway that leads up to his workshop. It’s a room full of magic that follows him around no matter where he’s set up his base for the moment, and you’re only allowed in when it’s time for a magic lesson or he needs to siphon some of your power to break a particularly nasty curse or lay a complex spell. It reminds you of your room in the Devildom, with green things growing everywhere and warm wood tones composing a bulk of the furniture. </p>
<hr/><p>
  <em> Little lights float through the air. Magic residue, he tells you your first night together in the workshop. You reach out to touch one of the drifting glimmers and he laces his fingers through yours and your heart practically swells with love.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> And he looks at you like you are his entire world, like he’s traversed two of the three realms all in service of finding you. His gaze is heavy but you feel lighter than you ever have before, knowing that he is there to support you. There’s nothing else to hold you down, after all. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He is all you need.  </em>
</p>
<hr/><p>This should be easy. He probably won’t even care when you say that you want to end whatever your relationship has devolved into; it’s not like he acknowledges your presence most of the time anyway. You’ve become a porcelain doll he’s forgotten on a shelf. Pretty, but a prop. Forgettable and, ultimately, replaceable. You wonder how many other people have stood where you are now, why there isn’t any trace of their existence. </p><p>You wonder if he’ll scrub you away just the same. </p>
<hr/><p>
  <em> Never leave me, he murmurs into your hair one night as you pant, curled beside him. He cradles you in his arms as he traces magic in the air above you, spells that you don’t recognize and can’t begin to unravel the meanings of. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Okay, you mumble back, half submerged in sleep already. He’s always like this, waiting until your guard is down to make gestures of affection. Waiting until you’re distracted with one thing or another to admit that he feels anything at all. I love you, you whisper to him when your thoughts catch up to his words. If you’re careful, you can catch this moment and preserve it, a still frame in the book that will become your memory.  </em>
</p>
<hr/><p>There’s so much you still haven’t learned, so much that you still don’t know. Despite every attempt, the cold walls he’s built around himself still stand tall. You’ve tried to breach them. Tried to bring him back down to a level you can manage, where he doesn’t feel quite so far away.</p><p>But you still stand at the bottom of his workshop stairs, mustering your courage and all the shattered pieces of your heart. </p><p>It isn’t working out.</p><p>You ask for so little, you remind yourself as you plant your foot firmly on the first stair. So little. Just attention and consistency; you don’t want to feel like a favorite toy he can put away when he wants only to pull back out when he’s bored. </p>
<hr/><p>
  <em> I think you’re forgetting something, he tells you with that soft smile as your fingers curls around the door handle. It’s a small errand, really. You just want fresh bread for dinner tonight, and the bakery is just down the street. It’s literally impossible that you could manage to run into trouble in the five minutes it would take you to go there and come back. He won’t even know you’re gone. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Solomon’s smile is soft and faint; you miss the way his lips thin in a scowl at first. He offers you the necklace like wearing it in any way is a debate. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Take the charm, he says, hiding his demand under the guise of a request. You should take the charm, you know. It’s for your safety; a sorcerer like Solomon doesn’t live for so long without accumulating a few enemies. He means well, when he asks you to wear it. But it feels too heavy, makes you feel sluggish with all of the magic tied up in it. In your idle moments, you’ve tried to pick at the spells to see what they are. Just out of curiosity. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I don’t need it, you say with your own gentle smile. Solomon only shakes his head and leans forward draping it across your collarbones and latching it behind your head as you try to ignore the feeling of a yoke being chained around your neck.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Do this for me, Solomon says as he kisses your cheek. It will make me feel better, knowing where you are. </em>
</p>
<hr/><p>For a moment you consider knocking on the door that separated you from the workshop, but you reassess your strategy as you stand there with your fist in the air. Knocking will give him time to adjust to your presence, and you need every advantage you can get. </p><p>Solomon, you’ve learned, is <em> too good. </em> There’s a reason he caught the Avatar of Lusts’s eye and holds one of the two pacts the demon has. His silver tongue has talked him out of more scrapes than you’ve ever been in, each more nail-biting and breathtaking than the last. If he has time to talk you out of your decision, that will be it. You know he’ll succeed.</p><p>So you push open the door and stand just inside of the magic workshop. Bursts of color trail through the air like leftover fragments of rainbows, and you try not to focus on them. </p>
<hr/><p>
  <em> He likes to hold you closest when he thinks you’re asleep. You’ve mastered breathing softly enough to mimic it that you get to witness more and more of these tender moments, the ones he likes to ration when you’re awake.  </em>
</p><p><em> You’re mine, he tells you as he thinks you’re sleeping, brushing your cheek with the back of his hand. He’s so used to having to share things </em> — <em> with other sorcerers, with Asmodeus, with the entire human population </em> — <em> that it almost makes your heart melt.  </em></p><p>
  <em> I am, you want to tell him, but that would ruin the moment. He’s only ever vulnerable when he thinks you don’t know. He’d told you once that he tries not to make too many deep connections. People always leave, he explained, and you don’t have to ask to know that he’s outlived too many friends.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> You’ll stay with me forever, he announces in those same hushed, reverent tones.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Instead of answering like you want to, you lean in to his touch. </em>
</p>
<hr/><p>“Solomon,” you announce your presence, but he’s already turning around to face you. Whatever he was working on he keeps in the palm of his hand. The spell glows, pulsing sluggishly. A sleep spell, maybe—but now isn’t the time to try to catalogue his various magic. “We need to talk.”</p><p>The sorcerer isn’t usually expressive. <em> Usually </em> he has a thin smile on his lips, one that hides any irritation or sadness or excitement. But <em> usually </em> you’re not standing in his doorway holding yourself to keep your heart from thudding out of your chest.</p><p>“Do we?” He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even bother to stand up to greet you, just swivels around on the stool he’s always sitting on. You want to scream at him before you remember that that would be irrational. </p><p>“I love you, Solomon,” you tell him, running your thumbs over your knuckles as you lace your hands together. Anything to keep you busy, to keep you from focusing on the way his expression breaks for a moment. “But I need to leave.”</p><p>“Wear the charm,” he says with a dismissive hand wave, and you shake your head. </p><p>“No, Solomon,” you tell him softly. It’s not like him to be so willfully ignorant, to play at being dumb. “I mean that I need to <em> leave.” </em></p><p>Solomon’s spine stiffens and your breath catches in your throat as he turns slowly to look back at you. For the first time in what has to be a very, <em> very </em> long time his face is awash with expression. Hurt. Almost physical pain. And, you think, if you stare long enough, there’s anger there too. </p><p>The first traces of fear make you shudder. </p><p>“You can’t,” he says coolly, and you think he’s pretending not to have understood you again. You share your head and show him the corner of your passport and the printout that bears your plane ticket. A one-way plane ticket, lest you be… tempted. </p><p>“I have to,” you try to reason with him. “I wish it could have been different. I really do.” He’ll see it your way, you’re sure. It might take a little while. But he’s not an unintelligent man, just sometimes a cold one. The two of you have always managed to come to agreements before, and you <em> thought </em> you’d been communicating well until… Well. Until. </p><p>Until it became painfully clear that you were more in love with him than he was with you. That you were more of a distraction for him than someone he truly wanted around. How else were you meant to have interpreted all of his cold silences and the weeks you’ve spent alone in unfamiliar places?</p><p>“Maybe we can meet again in a few months,” you offer him, sliding your passport and ticket back into your pocket. “Once things have settled down.” <em> And once I feel like myself again, </em> you don’t tell him. <em> Once I’ve been able to get over you. </em> He probably deserves a better goodbye than the one you’ve offered him. You <em> both </em> deserve one, actually, but you can’t offer that right now. You’re too drained. Too tired. You turn to walk back down the stairs and into stability.</p><p>“No,” Solomon says behind you, so quietly that you almost miss him completely. Sharp pain lances the small of your back and you such in a harsh breath, whirling—</p><p>“I do not wish for you to leave,” the sorcerer says as you crumple to the floor, your knees suddenly unable to support your weight. You almost feel like you’re floating, but the stinging coldness that sweeps through your muscles keeps you tethered to the earth. “And so you won’t.”</p><p>You want to ask him what he means by that, you really do. But when you go to open your mouth, you find that you can’t move at all. You can’t even blink like you want to, not even when your eyes start to water. As he stands and moves over towards you you watch, feeling your heart pounding in your chest.</p><p>Solomon stares down at you, his flinty eyes reflecting back some of the magic residue floating through the air.</p><p>“Really,” he breathes out as he tilts his head to the side. “Have I taught you <em> nothing? </em> You know better than to turn your back on a sorcerer.</p><p>And for a moment, you’re relieved. This is just another lesson like the ones you had at the very beginning when you were learning the foundations of magic. Mistakes will always happen, he said when you accidentally set your shirt sleeve on fire. But sometimes the best way to learn from them is to make them.</p><p>If so, then you’ve learned this lesson. He’s angry, but that’s because you were meant to have already absorbed this bit of knowledge. It’s just that you didn’t think you had to be so wary around <em> him </em> but, well: lesson learned. Again. He’ll release you from this spell and you’ll apologize and maybe even self-deprecatingly laugh about it before you leave for real and get on the plane and—</p><p>Solomon crushes down beside you and bundles you into his arms. You fall limply against him like a rag doll, face pressed against his soft shirt. <em> This is okay, </em> you tell yourself as he descends the workshop stairs. <em> He just didn’t want me to be on the floor. </em></p><p>But then he passes by the couch, and the two chairs in the kitchen, and anywhere you might have expected him to put you back down. <em> Just release the curse already </em>, you want to tell him, but your mouth remains spelled shut. All of the counterspells you can think of require you to draw sigils, which is impossible at the moment. </p><p>Nerves turn to trepidation when he carries to you the bedroom you share and lays you out on the edge of the bed. Neither one of you bothered to make the bed this morning, and you can feel the blankets bunched up below your back. But you still can’t move.</p><p><em> “This isn’t funny anymore, Solomon,” </em> you’d tell him if you could speak at all. </p><p>Dread overwhelms you when he leaves your line of sight—which for the moment is nothing but your ceiling—and you hear the lock in your bedroom door click shut. The gesture exists only to increase your anxieties because the only two people with access to the entire apartment are already inside of it. You know it. He knows it. And he <em> knows </em> that you know it. </p><p>Soon enough he’s back within your field of vision, staring down at you like you’re a particularly troubling enchantment he’s trying to pick apart. </p><p>“Come now, doll,” he sighs as he traces your cheek with the pad of his thumb. “You didn’t <em> actually </em> think you were going to leave, did you?”</p><p><em> “I did,” </em>you want to be able to tell him, but your ability to speak has been taken from you. All the same, Solomon seems to divine what you mean to say; his eyes narrow, glinting in the low light of your bedroom like quicksilver. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights, and the curtained window only lets so much precious sun in. </p><p>“I know that I’ve been busy, and I am sorry if you’ve felt neglected,” Solomon sighs, trailing his hand down to the first button of your blouse. He flicks it open easily and then works on the next. You want to fight him, to throw off the spell. Every touch of his against your skin feels like fire as it contrasts the chill of the magic surging through your body. “Let me make it up to you, hmm?”</p><p><em> “Solomon, stop,” </em> you try to tell him with your eyes. You’ll never turn your back on another sorcerer again if it means he releases you from his curse. In fact, you’re bargaining with yourself even now: if he lets you go, you’ll never interact with another sorcerer ever again. You want your human life back, where the most excitement you might have in any given day is <em> nothing </em> compared to the way Solomon’s steely gaze makes your heart thud right now. </p><p>“We were supposed to work together,” he says, leaning over you to bury his face in the crook of your neck, sounding more mournful than you think he has the right to. Considering everything. </p><p>The weight of his chest against yours makes it almost hard to breathe, but you can’t push him off or even tell him that he’s starting to hurt you. He could be harsh in his lessons (<em> a necessity, he explained the first time you had to nurse burned fingertips back to health. You must keep focus on the magic you’re doing, or it could go… wrong. It had nothing to do with the way your gaze lingered a little too long on the person busking in the street, the one you said the other day had pretty eyes. Why would you even ask that?) </em> but never outright cruel. He could be unpredictable in how he doled them out, but every time you looked back it made sense—even if he had to explain his thought process, sometimes. </p><p>You imagine so hard that you can move your fingertips that you almost start to believe your own lies.</p><p>Solomon breathes heavy at your neck and you count the heartbeats you feel pounding in your chest—<em> one two three four five six </em> —before he moves again, slithers off of you so that you can <em> breathe </em>. The cold dribble of air in your lungs is not the gasping breath you want to take, but you have to be happy with what you get. </p><p><em> (And hasn’t he said that so many times, in so many ways? Sorry, doll </em> — <em> I know you wanted to head back closer to where you lived, but isn’t Prague so exciting? You’ve always just nodded, accepted that yes, Mumbai is amazing in the summer, or yes, a part of you has always wanted to explore the banks of the Amazon River. Who wouldn’t?) </em></p><p><em> ( </em> <b> <em>You</em> </b> <em> , the part of you that hasn’t been completely subsumed by him always wanted to reply. You don’t like bugs and the way the sun reflected off the Siberian tundra almost seared your eyes.) </em></p><p>The rush of oxygen back into your lungs makes you almost as dizzy as his jetsetting wanderlust always did, but maybe the blank patches in your vision for a second are your imagination kicking back to life. The realization that you’re bare from the waist up is unwelcome, and if you could move you would have flinched. <em> If </em> you could move. </p><p>“Shh, it’s okay,” Solomon soothes you, as if sensing your distress. He runs his palms down your torso to stop where your ribs end. He likes this part of you, and while you’ve never been brave enough to ask why you’ve always assumed that it reminds him of just how alive you are. Your heartbeat coalesces there, after all, and when you lay panting beneath him he likes to watch the rise and fall of your chest like he’s surprised you’re still breathing. </p><p>He looks at you like it’s the first time he’s seen you bare, eyes full of wonderment that’s only barely tempered by the hard edge your announcement gave him. It’s the same look he gave you back when you were both in the middle of the exchange program, back when the <em> first </em> spell he laid on you unlocked the first hints of the magic resting in your veins. His affections from there only grew and grew and grew until—</p><p>Until you find yourself here, stretched out underneath him as he pulls further away from you, still watching your face as he takes your leggings and panties with him. Your expression doesn’t change. It can’t. You’re carefully blank, exactly like a porcelain doll. </p><p>The drag of fabric against your skin is familiar and you can’t help but to think of all the times it’s happened before, of all the times you wanted it. But now you don’t and even though it feels the same, you can’t help but to imagine that there’s something different besides your feelings on the matter. Like maybe something scraped, or hurt, or—anything, really, to make it not seem so familiar. </p><p>“Touch yourself.” You hear the words fall from his lips rather than see him speak because he’s moved slightly out of your line of sight and <em> oh </em> isn’t that cruel? Because it’s still the same voice you’re used to and you can’t divorce it from the one that used to greet you in the mornings or ask for a hug when he returned from whatever magical adventure he’d left you for. </p><p><em> “I can’t, you bastard,” </em> you want to snap at him. You want to remind him that your immobility is his own doing, to throw his spell back in his face. Maybe that way you’d feel some sort of satisfaction in this whole scenario. </p><p>But to your surprise and horror, your arm lifts. Mechanically, sure, as if he’s a puppet master plucking at your strings, but does all the same and you feel, like you’re living somewhere outside of yourself, as your own fingers part your lips. You’re dry, which is no surprise. You try to think of anything else as your own fingers make a show in front of him, legs bent at the knees with your feet flat on the mattress to give him an unobstructed view. </p><p>You ignore the way you can practically feel his eyes on you as you plan out your first day back in your own apartment. Maybe the gelato shop is still open, and—</p><p><em> Oh</em>.</p><p>The sensation of shuddering mentally but being unable to follow through physically is new and strange and you <em> hate it </em> but you can’t quell it. Solomon has always been analytical, watching to see what you like, what makes you feel good. And he’s precise, following through on that knowledge in ways that never failed to make you wail. </p><p>Now is no different, even when he’s pulling your strings. If you could grit your teeth at the first stirrings of your unwanted arousal, you would. </p><p>“You like that don’t you?” His sonorous tones reach you even as you’re trying to hide away in half-formed plans, ignoring the way your own thumb circles your clit as you work two fingers into yourself. The angle is off, a cruel mockery of what he normally does for you, and it hurts your wrist to keep going. But it’s so close to what you normally want, what you’re used to, that you almost try to answer him. </p><p>“I know you do,” he answers himself with a satisfied sigh. “You’re always so needy—go harder—that you can’t even keep up with yourself. See?” His order and the way your body leaps to comply make you want to shiver. “Such a needy little slut. But it’s okay.” Solomon leans over and you find yourself staring into his face again, his eyes trained on yours as he strokes his hand over your hair. “It’s okay. That’s why you’re mine.”</p><p>His hand leaves your hair and drags down your face until his thumb rests between your lips and against your teeth. He doesn’t push but you open your mouth anyway and he hooks two of his fingers in to press against the inside of your cheek. </p><p><em> Gelato, </em> you remind yourself. <em> I think I want to try a fruit flavor. Maybe strawberry. Or mango. Or maybe something entirely different </em>—</p><p>Your thoughts are cut off by the way you can feel your own walls start to twitch against your fingers and <em> maybe, </em> you allow your thoughts to drift back to the present. <em> Maybe he’ll let me go after this, maybe… </em></p><p>“Stop,” he orders, and you wonder if your face isn’t as frozen as you thought it was. Maybe he just knows you that well, that he could tell your body was starting to enjoy your ministrations even if your mind wasn’t. </p><p>“Not yet,” he chides as if you’re overeager and trying to leave him behind. You hear his belt unfasten and then the soft rasp of fabric against fabric as he slides it through the loops on his pants. With one hand, you can tell it’s a little bit clumsy; he doesn’t have any of his normal practiced precision. </p><p>But you don’t want to focus on him. You want to close your eyes so you don’t have to see the almost blank way he looks down at you. After spending so much time around him, you’ve gotten better at reading meaning into the smallest twinges of his facial muscles. There’s <em> something </em> there, you can tell, but it’s like it’s in a language you’ve forgotten how to read. </p><p>You focus on the ceiling and the little cracks in the paint there, the ones you mistook for spiderwebs when you first moved in. There’s one right by the doorway that you think looks something like a running horse, if you apply a liberal amount of imagination. </p><p>“If you’re going to come, doll,” Solomon says, forcing your attention back into reality. “It’s going to be around me, hmm?”</p><p>You feel him lower himself over you as you stare at cracked-paint constellations. <em> This must be what the Greeks felt like </em> , you tell yourself distantly. <em> Staring up into the sky and hoping for meaning. </em> But there’s no meaning to be had here, tethered to the earth, wedged under the body of the sorcerer you thought you knew—thought you loved. </p><p>“Put your arms around my shoulders.”</p><p>You’re helpless to do anything but comply, and your wrist twinges in agitation as you move it again. Maybe—maybe when you’re in the airport you can find a shop that sells a brace, or a compression wrap, or anything, really. </p><p>“Look at me.”</p><p>Your eyes slide back to his face, all mercury and steel, and he softens for a moment at your dull expression. <em> Maybe he doesn’t want this either, </em> you tell yourself, ignoring that the thought makes no sense. <em> He’s </em> not the one under a spell. <em> He’s </em> not the one with their ability to move independently taken away. <em> He’s </em> not—</p><p>Solomon leans over you, forearms braced against the mattress on either side of your head as he slides himself into you. It’s almost like the first time you made love, all soft touches and hesitant movements—except you don’t want to conflate the two because this is <em> not </em> making love, and your arms are only around him because he willed them to be there. </p><p>And your muscles are starting to ache from hanging on, anyway. </p><p>You think of the constellations cracked into your ceiling and wonder which one you would have been born under, if they lived in the sky. You think of gelato melting across your tongue and how far away most stars really are, in constellations, and isn’t it funny how humans looked at such disparate parts and put them together, made pictures out of them and told stories and—</p><p>“Be present with me, doll,” Solomon whispers into your ear, and like a fish you’re reeled right back into him as he pushes himself further in. If you could wince at the stretch you were only partly prepared for, you would.</p><p>
  <em> If, if if.  </em>
</p><p>But he moves so achingly slow that you find it easy to slip away again, right into the waters of indifference you wish you could drown in. If you don’t look hard at him you can almost pretend that he isn’t there. If you ignore the way he slowly enters and half-exists, you can almost pretend you’re somewhere else. Like an airport terminal. </p><p><em> Terminal. </em> </p><p>You don’t like the word.</p><p>No, you’re about to set out on a voyage. On a boat. On the river that you imagine is all around you, and that is why you’re chilled. The magic binding you in place has nothing to do with it at all. There’s no magic in the world, except for maybe constellations. </p><p>Solomon rocks into you and pets your hair. </p><p>“Good girl, good girl, I know you don’t actually want to leave. I know you want to stay here with me.”</p><p>The river is big enough to have waves, you decide, and the rocking motion is because a storm is coming. The storm stirs up the water and makes the boat roll, but you’ll be safe in your cabin below—</p><p>“I said to be present.”</p><p>He holds your jaw in an iron grip, forcing your consciousness back and onto him and your heart <em> races </em> because you think for an impossible moment that he can see into your mind, that he tarnished even that escape. But no, he's just better at reading you than you are at reading him. He knows the faraway look you get in your eyes and the way they soften at the edges when you’re lost in your dream world. At any other time, he’d find it endearing. </p><p>But not now, the hard cant to his head says. </p><p>“I thought you’d want it nice,” he says, as if that explains anything at all. You feel like you’re shaking but know that is an impossibility; the trembling you imagine is all in your head, all emotional. Strange, how the connection between emotions and actions is so hardwired. “But if you don’t want that, then we can… adapt.”</p><p>He’s good at adapting; he’s had centuries to practice it. You… less so. </p><p>Solomon shifts and the world spins and shifts and you think for the briefest of moments that you might actually be sick, the phantom taste of gelato seeping back into your waking nightmare. But when everything rights itself again you find yourself on top of the sorcerer, legs tucked underneath you on either side of his hips. Solomon looks at you half through his lashes and you feel his fingers drum against the plush surface of your ass. </p><p>“Ride me,” he orders, and your blood runs even colder, somehow, than it has been already. “Like you mean it. <em> Doll. </em>” He throws the pet name in your face, but it’s devoid even of the scrap of affection it had just a moment ago.</p><p><em> “Please don’t make me do this,” </em> you want to beg him. Because when it was just him doing things <em> to </em> you, you thought maybe you could manage. The pleas you wish you could voice remain stubbornly trapped under your tongue even as the spell compels you to move, to slide yourself up and down his length. He helps you out, at least, hands guiding you up and down, grinding you harder when you manage to scrape up enough presence of mind to avoid the spot in yourself that usually has you gasping. </p><p>“Don’t you want to feel good? I’m sorry that I’ve been distracted lately, but here—” he mocks you with a savage upward thrust that actually makes you <em> gasp </em> and wish you could claw his eyes out “—I’m all yours now. Isn’t this what you wanted? Attention? But oh, no.”</p><p>He removes one of his hands from you and lifts it to wipe away one of the tears that have leaked out of your eyes. It’s an unpleasant shock to feel it there. </p><p>“You wanted to <em> talk, </em> ” Solomon simpers, caressing your cheek and ripping the tear into your skin. “So go ahead. I’m listening. Go ahead and <em> talk. </em> Tell me that you’re leaving me again.”</p><p><em> I dare you, </em> you imagine him saying, and another tear rolls down your face. He’s ignoring this one, it seems, in favor of pulling your down closer to him. You’re still rutting against him as desperately as you can with this new angle, still spurred on by the spell he has you under. Only now he’s helping to set the tempo, thrusting up into you just as mercilessly. His fingernails dig into your side as his lips twist into a cruel smile.</p><p>“Can’t do that? Poor little doll. Then how about this: I want you to cum for me.”</p><p>The world around you screeches to a stop as you process what he’s said, process the fact that your body is already racing to comply. The heat in your stomach that you’ve been ignoring unfurls so quickly that it almost <em> hurts </em>, paradoxical pleasure ripping through you so hard you gasp again and fold over, shuddering and shaking and sobbing as you wrap your arms around yourself.</p><p>
  <em> You wrap your arms around yourself. </em>
</p><p>You can <em> move </em> again.</p><p>“Solomon,” you gasp out, throat ravaged with the weeping you’re trying and failing to hold back. <em> Please let me go, </em> you mean to ask him, but you shake so hard that your teeth chatter instead. </p><p>“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He skims your back with his fingertips, leaving goosebumps in his wake. It's a feather-light touch, making a mockery of the domineering control he’d had over you just a moment ago. “I know that you don’t really want to leave. I won’t let you go.”</p><p>You stare back at him, porcelain mien already in place. </p>
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